My opponent was actually a Press Ganger, and as I hadn't read the Hordes rulebook (and I'm still new to Warmachine) we were taking it easy and he put a lot of time into explaining to me how Hordes works. Highlights of the game include:
- My Berserker charging his Legionaires and doing nothing at all, then getting eaten by his Scythean.
- His Scythean destroying my Destroyer with seven(!) attacks in one round.
- His Scythean surviving a charge from my Spriggan (while knocked down and having taken damage from a boosted bombard, mind you).
- His Scythean finally going down to the Spriggan.
- Him using Thagrosh's feat to bring back the Scythean.
- His Ravagore and my Juggernaut getting into an extended slap-fight, with him eventually coming out the winner.
- Thagrosh surviving two pretty decent assassination runs by transferring damage.
- Thagrosh killing my Kovnik and then Sorscha.

It was an interesting and fun game, and things did seem to be going well for me a number of times. It certainly gave me a lot to think about, which is why I wanted to write more about my thoughts on the game and on Hordes. This rest of this post is very long winded and boring and is mainly written so I can get my own thoughts on the subject straight.

Battle Report
To the best of my recollection the actual battle went something like this. I didn't take any pictures as I hadn't originally intended to write a report.

He
won the roll off and decided to go first. He put his Warlock and Warbeasts in the center, and his Legionnaires on my left. I deployed
Sorcha's battlegroup with Kell opposite the Legionnaires, and the
Kovnik's group a little to the right of center, so I could draw his
heavy hitters away from Sorscha or I could converge on them as needed.Round 1
Everybody
ran forwards for a turn, and he shuffled some fury around in order to
explain to me how it works. He started to split his warbeasts, with theBolt-Thrower and the Scythean heading towards Sorscha on my left and the
other two towards the Kovnik on my right. I ran everyone forwards (except Kell).

Round 2
He put a surprising amount of damage on the Juggernaut and a little on the
Kovnik with the Ravagore's AOE spit attack, and continued moving
everything else forwards.

In my turn I ran the
Juggernaut up to the Ravagore to try to shut down his shooting as
quickly as possible, and put some damage on his Protector with
the Spriggan's grenades. The Destroyer landed a boosted bombard onto the Scythean and did a few boxes of damage. The Berserker ran into a
knot of Legionnaires and whiffed. The Wardog charged a Legionnaire,
missed, and came running back with his tail between his legs. Kell
sniped a couple of Legionnaires, then Sorscha peeked out from behind the
Destroyer and took out a knot of four with Tempest.

Round 3
He used the Ravagore to shoot the Juggernaut again, taking out his axe, but didn't move
away for some reason. The four remaining Legionnaires surrounded the
Berserker and put some damage onto him, then the Scythean finished
him off. Oh, and the Bolt-Thrower killed Kell.

Now that
everyone was nice and close together, I popped Sorschas feat, catching
the light warbeasts and the Scythean, along with a legionnaire. It
was at this point that I made the mistake of charging the Bolt-Thrower and
not the Scythean - the Bolt-Thrower was between my forces and Thagrosh, while the Ravagore was farther out, and my natural instinct was to get close to him. I finally got the Juggernaut into combat, but
with a crippled axe he wasn't able to finish off the Ravagore,
although he did take out it's body. From this point on my opponent kept
forgetting to heal the Ravagore's body, and so the two cripples
kept flailing at each other till the end. The Spriggan moved towards
Thagrosh, I think he did a little damage with his grenades again. Also, I
think I killed a Legionnaire with the dog and maybe another with Sorscha's
hand cannon.

Round 4
This turn he charged the as-yet untouched
Destroyer with the Scythean, getting seven (count them) attacks
and scrapping it in a single round. The two remaining Legionnaires
charged the Wardog and killed it. His Protector walked over to
stand near the Scythean for some reason.

I had
been moving Sorscha towards the center to keep her distance from the
Legionnaires, and the Spriggan was coming the other way to get to
Thagrosh. Happily this meant the Spriggan was close enough to have
Boundless Charge cast on him, so he was able to charge over the Destroyers corpse to attack the Scythean, who Sorscha first knocked down (along with the Protector) with Tempest. With only a single extra Jack Marshal attack,
he wasn't able to kill him though. The Kovnik took a shot at something
after moving closer to the action, and the Juggernaut kept flailing
around.

Round 5
After gaining fury to stand the Warbeasts back up, they attacked the Spriggan. He didn't want to max out their fury as he wanted them as potential transfer targets (no doubt the close proximity of my Kovnik to Thagrosh did not go unnoticed), as a result the Spriggan only lost about two thirds of his damage boxes (I think he lost his left arm on the last attack, but his other systems were fine). I think his Ravagore managed to take out the Juggernauts left arm this turn.

The order of activation was very important here, now that I understand damage transfer better I think I may have risked doing it in a different order. First I activated Sorscha to cast Boundless Charge on the Kovnik. I tried to kill the last two Legionnaires as well, but only killed one as I missed the other with either her shot or the spell, and decided to spend her last two focus wind-rushing away (but making sure to stay in range of the action). Then I activated the Kovnik so he could drive the Warjacks, then charged Thagrosh. With boundless charge he had a nine inch charge plus half-inch melee range, Thagrosh was just about nine inches away so that worked out. The Kovnik hit, and rolled pretty well as I recall on his with P&S 15 Weaponmaster charge attack. Of course Thagrosh just transferred the damage. The Spriggan then finished off the Scythean and the bodygaurd Warbeast. The Juggernaut did very little.

Round 6
I though things were looking alright this turn; he was down to a single quite badly injured Warbeast, a Legionnaire, and Thagrosh (and the Shepherds), while I had my Spriggan, Kovnik, Sorscha, and the Juggernaut was still standing. Then he used his feat to bring back his Scythean. Crap. Thagrosh killed the Kovnik and the Ravagore finally finished off the Juggernaut. Double-crap.

The Spriggan was standing on the wreck of the Destroyer so he couldn't move far enough to get to anyone, and with his back to everything he couldn't have charged even with Boundless Charge, my only option was to move him as far as I could and shoot his grenades at Thagrosh, but at RAT 4 and without the Kovnik to boost his attacks he was never going to get a direct hit, and the blast damage from his grenades is POW 5, meaning he needed a double-six to put one point of damage on Thagrosh. He didn't get any double-sixes. All I had left was the Hail-Mary Sorscha charge. It wasn't enough.

So... Warlocks literally bleed fury, can heal their warbeasts from a distance, and can't be killed because they can just pass off damage to their warbeasts? Good to know. I find it funny how after the game two people spent a good fifteen minutes trying to explain how Hordes isn't actually overpowered compared to Warmachine, even though I never said it was - me thinks the lady doth protest a little too much...

Like I said, it was fun game, and very interesting. In retrospect and with a better understanding of how Hordes works, I can see some things that I should have done differently.

First, swapping the Berserker with the Spriggan would let me
make better use of the Spriggan with focus, and better use of the
Berserker with boosted attack rolls, plus it would have put all my
shooting in one place for better effect against infantry - at least it
would have worked out better that way in this game.

Second,
I loaded up the Destroyer with focus, cast Boundless Charge on him,
then charged a light warbeast (the crossbow fellow) instead of the Scythean. The little guy died in two hits, leaving the Destroyer
with two unuseable focus, then he got murdered by the Scythean.
This was before I realised just how dangerous that monster actually was. It might
have something to do with the fact that the crossbow guy had just killed
Kell Bailoch and wasn't too far away from Sorscha of course.

Third,
the Spriggan should have stuck with the Juggernaut and wiped out the Ravagore. At the time I thought a P&S 19 beatstick could
take out a shooty gribbly, but this was before I lost my axe and
understood how Warbeasts use fury. I now understand that, because Warbeasts don't have the same focus limits and are extremely easy to
heal - at least enough to restore systems (or aspects or whatever they
are called), to deal with Hordes you have to use overwhelming power at
one point in order to knock out Warbeasts in a single round.

Fourth,
on the turn I attacked Thagrosh with the Kovnik, I should have
activated the Jacks first in the vague hopes I could have taken out his
transfer targets. I could have even tried to charge him with Sorscha as
well to try to overwhelm his ability to transfer damage, but of course
that would have been an all-or-nothing round. Going by the first plan, I
think if I had been lucky enough to take out the two Warbeasts with the
Spriggan without boosted attack rolls, he would have had to transfer
damage to the Ravagore, which would have killed it and left the
Juggernaut alive. The next turn I would have had a chance to move in
with both Warjacks, and who knows what would have happened then. The
second plan, charging in Sorscha as well, would probably not have been
enough to kill him as she would have been down to two focus at best even
if she had been able to reach him, and then he would have just killed
her next turn.

Thoughts about Hordes
While I can see the limitations of the fury system and Warmachine's Focus mechanic certainly feels less complex, at this point the fury system intrinsically more powerful than the focus system to me. Let me break it down. To keep things simple we'll deal with focus/fury six casters/warlocks.

Hordes:
Warbeasts generate fury that the Warlock can then use.Warmachine:
Warjacks use focus that the Warcaster could have otherwise used.Comparison:
In Warmachine, you have (for example) six focus points a round. You can use them to cast spells or buy or boost attacks. In Hordes, you force warbeasts to boost or get extra attacks, which generates fury that your Warlock can use next round - but your warlock can only handle (for example) six fury, if you generate more you risk your warbeasts frenzying. Since your Warlock will probably have six fury from last round, it's basically equivalent to having twelve focus points per round in Warmachine.
In my game he also had two Shepherds who could strip off three fury points each, so overall allowing him up to generate up to six extra fury points from his warbeasts without worrying about them frenzying. In Warmachine, Cygnar has a journeyman warcaster who can run his own jack with his three focus points, but you can only take one of him. Menoth have wracks which you can get extra focus from (but I'm not sure how much focus). Khador has a Koldun Lord who can give one jack one focus point as long as it doesn't already have any focus. I don't think any of the Warmachine options are as powerful as having those two Shepherds - and I don't even know if he could have taken more.
If your warbeasts generate more fury, there's a chance they can frenzy next round. Well, it's a chance not a certainty, and if they do frenzy there's a decent chance what they will actually do is just attack your enemy anyway. Besides, it's an option, one that Warmachine doesn't have; that extra fury you generate might be enough to prevent your beast from getting killed next turn or even to win the game when you need that crucial attack.
There is another aspect to this; Warlocks are dependent on Warbeasts; if they start to run out they
won't have enough fury to be effective. If they don't have any they need
to take damage in order to generate fury or else they can't do very
much at all.
Warcasters meanwhile generate their own focus. While they
have lots of Warjacks to sustain they generally can't do very much
themselves without leaving Warjacks to go hungry, but when they run out
of Warjacks they can still be pretty effective themselves.
Take
for example Sorscha; if she runs out of Warjacks she can still move,
shoot, cast a couple of offensive spells then wind-rush away from harm,
meaning she can cause some mischief all on her own. And Butcher or
Karchev? If a Warlock and Warcaster are the last two models left in the
game, on average I figure the Warcaster has the advantage.Advantage:
Focus is a more consistent resource in Warmachine armies, while
Hordes armies get more use out of fury initially, but can run dry when
their army gets depleted, so if the game goes on long enough a
Warmachine army can start to get the advantage. Of course, that means a
Horde army has an advantage right from the start and it's only later
that thing might possibly swing back the other way, so I would say Hordes has the advantage here overall.

Hordes:
Some warbeasts can generate up to 4 fury. Most generate less I think. If you reach your threshold, there's some limits, like not being able to accept transferred damage from the warlock.In Warmachine:
All Warjacks can be allocated up to 3 focus. Many don't typically benefit from that much, such as one-shot ranged warjacks, who rarely need more than 2.Comparison:
A heavy Warbeast generating 4 fury is a real monster. The fact that some can't generate as much fury as some warjacks can be allocated isn't such a calamity since the warmachine player probably won't be able to allocate three focus to all his warjacks, especially not if he has more than two. And having that heavy Warbeast go crazy with four fury at the right time can be a big advantage.Advantage:
Hordes.

Hordes:
The Warlock can transfer damage to his warbeasts using fury.Warmachine:
The Warcaster's armour is increased by his remaining fury.Comparison:
The Warlock pays a point of fury for every attack's damage that he transfers. The Warcaster gains a point of armour for every point of focus that he has left.
The Warlock needs to have fury, a transfer target (one of his warbeasts) in range, and some things (such as maxing out their fury) makes a warbeast unable to accept transfer damage.
On the face of it the fact that the damage doesn't "disappear" but is in fact taken by a warbeast makes it sound like it's not really all that good, but since the alternative is losing the game, that's not that bad. Consider that a Warcaster who hasn't spent any focus at all is probably at armour 20 max (highly unlikely most of the time), and a charging Warbeast or Warjack is going to be doing P&S 18 plus three dice damage on his first hit, the warcaster is going to take damage, and is in fact unlikely to survive the encounter. A Warlock on full fury won't take any damage at all, or can choose to eat the damage from attacks that have a low damage roll to save the fury for transferring the high rolls. Yes, in theory a Warlock could run out of fury or transfer targets and start taking damage from lots of low power attacks in a situation where a Warcaster would take very little damage due to his high armour, but it feels to me that it's unlikely to actually happen unless the game is almost over anyway, since most early to mid-game assassination runs involve getting a few high power attacks on the target rather than a whole mess of lower power attacks. In my game Thagrosh survived an assassination run by Sorscha that would have taken out your average Warcaster (she landed four attacks, the second one froze him), with 2 fury to spare no less. This is after taking some shots from the Spriggan's grenades and surviving a high-damage hit from the Kovnik (a P&S 15 weaponmaster charge attack).Advantage:
Hordes.

Hordes:
The Warcaster can heal Warbeasts in his control area at 1 fury per damage point.Warmachine:
It is possible to buy units, such as mechanics, who can heal Warjacks (typically if they are in base-to-base).Comparison:
While the mechanics in Warmachine can heal more damage without costing you focus, they cost points, have to be in base-to-base and must pass a skill roll. The dice rolls make it less reliable and being in base-to-base makes them vulnerable, plus if a warjack runs or charges more than five or size inches they won't be able to fix it that turn (or the next if they fix it before it moves) as they aren't fast enough to catch up on their normal movement, and they need their action to perform the repair. The Warlock certainly can't heal as much damage, but is almost guaranteed to be able to restore a lost aspect restoring their combat ability for one turn.Advantage:
I think maybe Hordes has the advantage at lower points levels and Warmachine at higher points levels; personally I think the reliability of the Hordes ability is valuable.

Hordes:
Warbeasts are forced, which generates fury, during the activation phase, though they can only be forced while in their Warlock's control area.Warmachine:
Warjacks are allocated focus in the maintenance phase (I think), and can only be allocated focus while in their Warcaster's control area, but can then move out of it and use the focus.Comparison:
In Hordes your warbeasts are greatly diminished if they leave the Warlock's control area, while in Warmachine they can get their focus then charge off to use it outside the Warcaster's control area. However, next turn they won't be able to get any focus. So in Hordes, the Warbeasts really need to stay close to the Warlock, while in Warmachine there's a bit more freedom to spread the Warjacks out, as long as you're sure they won't need focus next turn, however in Hordes if the Warlock is too far from a Warbeast that needs to be forced at the start of the turn, he has the option to move up to it; an option you don't have in Warmachine.
In Warmachine the player has to plan ahead and guess how much focus he needs, and if he misjudges it costs him dearly. For example, if he loads a Jack up with focus then fails a charge, he now has a bunch of focus sitting there unable to be used (this happens to me a lot).
Consider a scenario: the Warmachine player has two Warjacks and wants to charge two Warbeasts. He has four focus to spare on them. He decides that one beast really has to die and gives on jack three focus, and the other a single point. That jack charges in, gets some really lucky dice rolls and kills the warbeast with two focus points left. His other warjack, with only the single focus point, fails to do very much damage do it's opponent.
Now consider a Hordes player with two warbeasts that he wants to charge into two warjacks. He can only leach four focus off them, and doesn't want to risk them frenzying. He decides one warjack simply has to die, and resolves to spend up to the first Warbeast's limit of three fury to do it. He gets some lucky dice rolls and kills the jack with only one fury point generated. Now he's free to generate up to three fury with the second warbeast, so no fury is "wasted".Advantage:
It looks to me like in this case Warmachine might have the potential to be more powerful, but Hordes is more forgiving.

Obviously I'm new to this and my experience is severely limited, so I'm sure as I understand the games better I'll revise my opinion, this is just how it looks to me right now is all.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

While waiting for some parts I needed for the finishing touches on my current "main" hobby project, I looked through my queue of backed up projects for something that I could finished quickly. I had assembled, primed and sprayed the war dog red at the same time as some of my warjacks, so I figured it wouldn't take too long to finish him off. I actually underestimated the fiddly-ness of his armour, but still he didn't take too much work. I called him Marmaduke, simply because that's the dog he most reminds me of (and because Lassie was too obvious).

I'm not particularly fond of the model - nothing at all wrong with it, it has some nice details and a dynamic pose, it just doesn't hold any particular appeal to me - so I pretty much put in the bare minimum of work. I basically just painted the basecoat colours and then slapped on some quickshade. I generally feel metals look OK with just a shade and no highlights, and quickshade can work very well for organic forms like his body (although I guess it came out a little flat in this case). All the armour was edged with bronze so I didn't need to highlight the red. I did edge-highlight the leather straps, though.

The only really interesting thing for me was the mouth; I didn't have any suitable colour for it, so I tried mixing Fulgrim Pink (one of the citadel edge paints) with Elf Flesh. With a little experimentation I ended up with a colour that I thought was pretty much perfect. You couldn't see it very well once the shade had darkened the inside of his mouth, but if you look close you can see his tongue is a rather nice shade of pink. Speaking of, after varnishing I brushed a little citadel water effects onto his eyes, nose and mouth, to make him look a little "slobbery" - a dog's nose, especially, is supposed to be wet (unfortunately I did it after taking the pictures, though I'm not sure it would have been obvious in photos anyway). I should probably just use gloss varnish next time; it would be hardier, although I don't think it looks quite as wet.

I did get a couple of spots of crackling on the purity seal. I varnished it on a cold night, which could be the problem. The other possible culprit is that I held the model quite far from the can a couple of times, which I actually feel is slightly more likely to be the problem as I noticed what I was doing early on and then noticed the crackling; I don't think I got any more after I started holding it closer to the can.

You will notice that I went ahead and put some snow on his base. I finally decided that the PP recessed bases just don't work in plain black and need something to fill them, so my Khador army is going to have simple snow bases - I've already gone back and added it to the warjacks. Unfortunately this has complicated my life considerably as not only is there more work and expense incurred, there's a whole lot more decision-making involved in every model now - not only does it have to look good on it's own, it has to work with it's base, and I also have to consider it's relationship with every other model in my collection. You may laugh, but this is the kind of thing that can really bother me and I can get very obsessive about, which is exactly why I made the decision to have clean black bases all those years ago - the model would stand on it's own and yet look consistent with any model I put it next to, either on the gaming table or display shelf. Damned Privateer Press, I can pretty much promise my productivity is going to drop even further from now on.

Monday, November 25, 2013

I've seen Berserkers before, but this one was different. It looked... wrong somehow, like such a thing should never have existed in this world. And that sound; when it vented steam I could almost hear words... I know you'll think me crazy for this, but I swear it sounded like it was trying to say "Kill me"...

I wanted the Khador Berserker for my army as it's cheap and can charge for free. But the model is one of the ugliest warjacks I've seen. The thing is, it actually has some reasonably nice elements, like the shoulder pads. After staring at it for a while, I finally figured out the two elements that most ruin it for me. The head and the exhausts. It has this stupid dinky little golf-ball head and these ugly squared exhausts.

Now I don't have any spare warjack heads. But it turns out the head is about the same size as a Space Marine helmet, and I've got plenty of those lying around. So I figured if it was going to look ugly, it would at least look ugly on my terms. Plus at least this way it's somewhat unique.

I also chopped the rear part of the body in half in order to reduce it's excessive bulk and get rid of the ugly exhaust pipes. It took some greenstuff work to meld the boiler with the front of the body, but I actually kind of enjoyed that. I gave it a single small exhast pipe that I made from a section of perspex rod; I figured that was good enough.

I painted it the body the same way as I did Jughead, except that I used the quickshade before applying the weathering. The idea was that this way the metal exposed under the paint looks "fresher" than the actual metal parts. In practice it didn't make all that much difference, it seems that the purity seal rather than the quickshade is largely responsible for dimming the metals. I don't know if that particular to purity seal or just a consequence of matting them down, I may need to run some tests.

I decided to paint the head white (which I didn't do a very good job of, but whatever, I figured it's good enough) as that's a common colour for space marine veterans heads, and I wanted it to stand out from the rest of the model and serve as the centre of attention. I want people to look at the model and think "Ok, it's a warjOH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL IS THAT! IT'S A MONSTER! KILL IT WITH FIRE!". Hence it's name: the Abomination.

So yeah, I kinda like him in the end. I actually rushed to finish him so I could stick the arms on in time for a Warmachine "Mangled Metal" event. The idea was to bring a 25pt warjack-only army, which suited me fine. Unfortunately, for some reason I though we were playing at 30 points, so picked up a Spriggan, which together with the Berserker, Juggernaut and Destroyer came to 27 points. When I got there and realized it was a 25 point event, I had to take the Abomination out of my list. Another player lent me a Decimator to use instead of the Juggernaut, which gave me a 23 point list, so that had to do.

However, being somewhat distracted, I actually used him instead of the more expensive Destroyer, meaning I actually played my first two games four points down. Not that it mattered; the only damage my first opponent took was from himself, and the second assassinated my caster at the very start of his second turn.

In my first game my opponent was using a Cryx list with three heavy warjacks that had three attacks each and, through a combination of built-in abilities and an event-specific upgrade, all generated focus (I think they were generating a total of four focus points a turn). He moved them forwards so they were right in front of my jacks, then used a feat that prevented me from attacking them. So there was pretty much nothing I could do in my turn but shuffle around a bit. I ran my Decimator past him in order to try to reach his caster, but got bogged down by rough terrain. Next turn he killed my Spriggan and Juggernaut, while my Decimator was too far from my caster to get focus and so couldn't run. After he surrounded my Decimator, and ran his caster far away, I conceded.

In the second game, my opponent castled up in his deployment zone. I moved all my jacks up, with Sorscha hiding behind the Decimator but moving up with them in order to stay in focus-allocation range and not leave them dry like last time. I think my opponent was playing Kreoss, who's feat is that he knocks everyone down. It turns out that knocked-down models don't block line of sight, so he simply shot over the fallen Decimator and killed Sorscha before the fight had event begun.

In the third game I played against a Cygnar list with Striker, two Stormclads, a Defender, and maybe something else. This time I woke up and played the Destroyer instead of the Juggernaut, so I was only 2 points down. He didn't move forwards very much, so I came to him. Running my spriggan up my right flank I ended up just in melee range of Striker. Not wanting to take a free strike from moving away, he attacked the Spriggan with Striker and a couple of jacks, but unlucky to-hit rolls saw the Spriggan survive the round (I was at def 12 thanks to the event-specific upgrade I had chosen for it), although it was disrupted. It didn't help that he spent some of his focus casting a defensive spell on Striker, which I didn't think he needed seeing as he also feated for +5 armour. In my turn I couldn't allocate any focus to the Spriggan so it took a few ineffectual swings at Caine while the rest of my army moved up. In his turn he finished off the Spriggan, but he made a mistake by attacking with Striker first, so he couldn't move away afterwards. This meant Sorscha was in range for an assassination run over the Spriggan's dead body. Funnily enough I hadn't realised this until he told me about it; my plan had been to arc spells into him through the scenario arc node, which wouldn't have been enough to do the job. Anyway, she wind-rushed then charged in and just managed to finish him with her last attack. So yeah, my first victory. Ever. Yay!

I played a fourth game against a Cygnar player, who wanted to try to run Stormwall in an attempt to destroyed the arm-25 node that was part of the scenario. I had been asking him about Kraye, so he took him with two hunters to fill out the list. Watching a collosal with it's speed doubled by Kraye run 20 inches over the table was slightly scary. Next turn he did something (I don't remember if it was Kraye's feat or a spell) that boosted all his shooting attack rolls. Then he reminded me that the Stormwall had an upgrade that increased it's shooting range by 4 inches, which meant it's main guns had an 18 inch range. Let me tell you something; watching my jacks move forwards four inches, then watching a colossal move forwards 10 inches and fire 18 is rather depressing. Anyway, he found line of sight to Sorscha and a few shots later it was over.

Since that game finished so quickly we played again, this time he replaced the Stormwall with a Stormclad and a Centurion. I ran forwards while he shuffled around a bit, then I decided to attack the arc node with my Spriggan while the other two jacks caught up. Eventually I managed to put 15 points of damage on the arc node, but he managed to take off the last five. This actually cleared an opening for my Spriggan to charge his jacks. While the Spriggan fought the Centurion and one of the Hunters, he charged my Destroyer with his Stormclad and arced lighting in to Sorscha, who was in base contact. He didn't roll well enough though, and she was left with seven damage boxes (and the Destroyer with eleven). After my jacks wrecked his Stormclad and his Hunter, he used the second hunter to take out the Destroyer (he just managed to put exactly eleven damage on it), then moved Kraye around the engaged Spriggan to put boosted rifle shots into Sorcha. He was rolling hot at this point, and his second shot (of three) was more than enough to kill her.

So five games, one win. Not bad really, and it was fun. I did find the slow speed of Khador's jacks to be a big disadvantage, especially when rough terrain enters the equation. Sorscha's feat is a lot less useful when they can so easily shake it off with a few focus points - although poor positioning was a big part of the problem. Every game it seemed like she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Loosing didn't bother me really, but something else did. Maybe it's just the nature of this kind of jack-only event, but I noticed that unless they had some ready gimmick - like the Cryx player's feat preventing me from attacking him, or the Stormwall - everyone preferred to just castle up in the back and wait for me to enter their charge range, so they could get the first round of attacks. Yes, I get that it makes tactical sense, but I just feel like it put the burden on me to move forwards and let myself get attacked in order for the game to be fun, and not just be two armies staring at each other not moving.

It just feels like a problem inherent to the system: there's no degree of randomness in movement, and getting the first turn of combat is a big advantage, so whoever is better at mentally measuring ranges and is more stubbornly willing to wait the other player out is in a better position to win. I expect this to be much less of a problem in larger games with more units and better objectives, I guess I'll see.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

In a previous post I showed a picture of a 30mm base I was working on. Well, I finished it, and it didn't even take too long (not compared to the custom bases I was building from breadboard and plasticard anyway!), and it's a hell of a lot better than all my previous bases. It's indistinguishable from a normal 30mm base (with the recess filled in), it's faster and easier to make, and it's much more scratch resistant. I think the real breakthroughs were the improved components I got my hands on, slightly thicker 30mm base that's just deep enough for everything, and me getting a little better at soldering.

Since this was an early prototype I didn't want to spend too long on the miniature on top, so I grabbed a Haloclix Cortana mini that I had lying around. Not only would there be no virtually assembly or painting involved, it would give me an opportunity to try and fit all the components - including the LEDs - in the base for a real "worst case scenario".

And it turns out it was a worst case, for one main reason. Cortana pretty much had to be right in the centre of the base, which meant that the LEDs had to sit right in the centre inside, which meant the battery had to be pushed out to the edge, where it just didn't quite sit right. As a result it's a bit fiddly to get the battery to actually work, and it can slip just enough to cut the power while handling the mini. But I think I might be able to fix that in future bases, and it won't always need to be pushed that far out anyway. So overall this base was a great success!

While I'm very happy with how the base worked out, there is a small problem with the overall miniature. Light from the base just doesn't reach her head, and it's only really her feet that light up. In the light it doesn't look that bad, like she's a hologram and there's just a little extra light "leaking" from the projector in the base, but in the dark it doesn't work very well, and my paint job just makes it worse.

The base model looked very un-detailed, so I wanted to use a wash to bring out the detail and depth a little. I also thought I could probably do a better job of the "data lines". I tried to strip the paint off, but Dettol didn't seem to have any effect, so I settled for just a wash on top.

I primed it with Purity Seal, then carefully painted on a 1:1 mix of Asurmen Blue wash with Lahmian Medium, making sure it didn't pool too much. I then added pure Asurmen Blue directly into a few areas where I thought it still needed more contrast, like the face. I then varnished it with Purity Seal.

While this did help a bit with the detail, it darkened the figure a lot more than I expected. It looks more detailed but less transparent in light, and I think it just has even less light reaching the upper parts of the model in the dark.

Overall though everything worked out quite well, and it didn't take much time at all. In fact I mostly finished this model over a month ago, but for some reason I wanted to finish Daedalus before finished her and posting pictures. After all, he was assembled and working almost a year ago, I figured he deserved to be finished first. Besides, if I didn't finish him before finishing her, I probably would have been too busy making models with the new bases to ever get around to finishing him.

Just for fun I decided to take some pictures of them together, and those photos came out really well: